A former television anchorwoman and an inexperienced fisherman struggle for power after becoming stranded together on what appears to be an uninhabited island in director Toru Kamei's lusty tale of desert island desperation. Erika was a… MoreA former television anchorwoman and an inexperienced fisherman struggle for power after becoming stranded together on what appears to be an uninhabited island in director Toru Kamei's lusty tale of desert island desperation. Erika was a celebrated television news personality before she decided to return to her small hometown and campaign for a seat in the national party, and Yohei was just a meager fisherman who had not yet become one with the sea. Now, despite the fact that they couldn't be more different, Erika and Yohei have become trapped together in a place that feels far removed from the civilized world. As primal instincts kick in, this unlikely pair finds that they never really knew themselves until everything they knew was suddenly stripped away.

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Steadily maintaining momentum and a meditative mood without narration or editorialization is itself a feat, but more vitally, Paradise appreciates and shares the curious mysteries in the seemingly banal.

It wouldn't be a stretch to compare Paradise to Alphaville, what with its imagining of the modern as otherworldly, or to imagine it as a capsule made by an outer-space explorer who visits Earth and finds layers of mystery in the mundane.